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Volvo Door Mirror Mismatched Folding

One of the problems that I encountered with the S80 is that when I unlocked the car and pressed the button to unfold the door mirrors, they would be out of sync with each other. That is one would open and at the same time the other would close. You can open the closed mirror manually, but when you press the button to fold then mirrors, one would close and the the other would remain open.

After some research online, I figured out the problem -- the mirror's folded/open position is stored in memory and the car uses this position to instruct the mirror motors on what action to perform (fold/unfold) when you press the button to unfold the mirrors again. Now if you're in a hurry and happen to switch off the vehicle before the mirror folding operation could be completed, storing of the mirror position in memory cannot be completed accurately.

The solution to the problem turns out to be very simple.

Turn off the car.

Locate the fuse box in the passenger compartment. Locate fuses for left and right door power windows and mirrors. For 2004 S80 these are fuses 35 & 36 respectively. Here is the list of fuses in this fuse box. It looks like this:

Remove the left door fuse (fuse number 35).

Manually push the left door mirror position to be in sync with the right door mirror position.

Start the car.

Turn off the car

Replace the fuse you removed in step 2.

Start the car again and now press the door mirror button. If it was the left mirror whose position was wrongly recorded in memory, everything should be fine.

If the mirrors are still out of sync with each other, repeat steps 2-7 with right door fuse (fuse number 36) and manually bringing the right door mirror to be in sync with the left door mirror position.

This technique should work for all Volvo cars with electric door mirrors. Of course you do need consult your vehicle's manual for the right fuse to remove.